Best practice sharing between teams
SMALL working teams should not only work together with other teams within the enterprise, especially those that belong to the same suite of strategic priorities, such as the priorities associated with the enterprise’s core process. They should also learn from each other, and in the process encourage each other and help each other succeed.
This openness to learn from others and help other teams is best shown in the sharing of best practices and of useful lessons drawn from each team’s success. Sharing of best practices can be in these specific fields:
• Inner dynamics of successful teams. Those teams that keep on delivering performance, consistently beating their targeted performance commitment should be open about their team’s “secret” of success. What is it in team practices that have most helped the team to deliver superior levels of performance on a consistent basis? These lessons from the same ground where other teams also operate should be of great use to encourage and inspire them.
• Observance of specific governance habits, which help imprint the governance character on individual team members. It is of extreme importance that teams learn from each other on how governance values are observed by individual team members, who are each struggling to become good governance warriors. Success stories, particularly those involving some degree of heroism and turning in extraordinary outcomes, are very useful to highlight and spread across all teams within the enterprise.
• Of special interest to almost every individual in the enterprise are lessons learned from the practices of the team to inculcate and facilitate the observance of a regular savings habit, by which a nest egg is built up by individuals, perhaps with support and collaboration from other members of the team. How the team facilitates learning and actually abiding by the basic financial discipline of individuals, who live within their means and set aside some sum for personal savings could also be of great help to other teams.
There are special topics that the team may have addressed carefully and creatively, always respecting the freedom of individual team members, but also providing open opportunities by which they can bond more closely with each other, with fun and profit. The areas covered would extend to all facets of life and work included in the personal governance scorecard, e.g., physical fitness, cultural and educational broadening, continuing professional training, social relations (starting with the family), environmental quality improvement, and moral as well as spiritual formation. These special topics — broad as their coverage is — would require a wide- ranging program for the team outside of work and professional commitments. As always, great care has to be taken to strike a proper and healthy balance between all facets.
Nonetheless, the idea holds: teams must be open not only to working in close solidarity with other teams within the enterprise. They should also be more than willing to share whatever useful lessons they have learned from working as a successful (on an over-all, comprehensive basis) small, working team.